Clyde Tombaugh’s journey to the stars began far from the halls of academia, rooted instead in the fertile soil of the American Midwest. Born on February 4, 1906, on a farm near Streator, Illinois, he was the eldest of six children. His fascination with the cosmos was sparked by a mix of curiosity and mentorship; at age 12, he fell in love with geography, which naturally led him to wonder about the “geography” of other worlds. This interest was nurtured by his Uncle Lee, an amateur astronomer who lent Clyde a small telescope and books that introduced him to his lifelong heroes: Galileo, William Herschel, and Percival Lowell.
In 1922, seeking better farming conditions, the Tombaugh family relocated to Burdett, Kansas. While the dark, expansive Kansas skies were a boon for a budding astronomer, the harsh realities of farm life nearly ended his dreams. In 1928, a devastating hailstorm wiped out the family’s wheat crops, destroying the funds intended for Clyde’s college education. Refusing to let go of his passion, Clyde took a “DIY” approach to science that would become legendary.
Working with a pick and shovel, he dug a 24-foot-long pit in the ground—which doubled as the family’s tornado cellar—to create a temperature-stable environment for grinding telescope mirrors. He became a master of “found-object” engineering, constructing a high-quality 9-inch reflecting telescope using:
- The crankshaft from his father’s 1910 Buick.
- Parts from an old cream separator.
- Discarded farm machinery for the mounting.
With this homemade instrument, Tombaugh produced drawings of Mars and Jupiter so precise they rivaled professional work. In late 1928, he sent these sketches to the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, simply hoping for some expert feedback. Instead, the director, V.M. Slipher, saw in those drawings the hand of a man who possessed the infinite patience required for the most tedious job in astronomy: the search for a needle in a celestial haystack.
In January 1929, with twenty dollars in his pocket and a one-way train ticket, Clyde boarded a Santa Fe train headed west for Arizona. He left behind the plow and the hail-ruined fields, carrying with him only his high school diploma and the relentless work ethic of a Kansas farmer. He was headed toward a cold, lonely dome on Mars Hill, where he would eventually find a new world and secure his place in history.
Clyde Tombaugh 